Highlights From the Archives

At Bonnie Raitt's age, 52, a movie actress might be offered roles as a mom, a professor or a kooky neighbor. But as a singer and songwriter, Ms. Raitt does her own casting, and she has better ideas. Her songs keep her at center stage as a lover and a friend, unabashedly sexy and smart. It's the same appealing character she has portrayed through three decades, and she was wise enough in the 1970's to choose and write songs that she can still stand by now.

Bonnie Raitt dropped out of Radcliffe College in the late 1960's to pursue her music, and later stubbornly refused to compromise her blues-oriented rock to the industry's more mainstream standards. And in the mid-1980's she acknowledged and began to treat an alcohol addiction. Growing up with a dad (the original Billy Bigelow in "Carousel" and Sid Sorokin in "The Pajama Game")who epitomized the romantic leading man, squeaky clean and always on the side of right, the two seem a classic in opposites.

When a deserving artist like Bonnie Raitt - who just won four Grammy Awards including album of the year and best female pop vocalist - is unexpectedly rewarded, one's fascination in the whole hit-making process becomes rekindled.

With her album ''Nick of Time'' rapidly rising toward the Top 20, Bonnie Raitt has suddenly found new acclaim for her long-established virtues: her clear voice, her bluesy phrasing, and songs carefully chosen to treat love as a complex but equal partnership.

Bonnie Raitt is a blues singer and guitarist who functions with equal ease in the areas of blues-rock and folk-rock. She is an interpretive singer in an age of singer-songwriters, but she's a strong and distinctive one, with an engaging buzz-saw voice and a warm, relaxed stage personality.

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